Friday Business Report: When Will San Diego’s Jobs Return?

Miro Copic, BottomLine Marketing Partner, discusses the latest national unemployment claims. While declining, last week’s unemployment claims of 2.4 million was 10 times higher than the weekly average over the last 5 years. With nearly 40 million individuals filing unemployment claims, this represents almost 25% of the labor force. While it affects all sectors, leisure and hospitality and retail workers have been disproportionately impacted. Copic discusses how many of these jobs might actually come back as businesses will incur additional costs to keep guests safe and healthy. This might be an opportunity for technology to make change the landscape in quick service and casual dining chains as well as hotel check-in – eliminating many jobs permanently. Copic also commented on California’s 15.5% unemployment rate, which is higher than the national unemployment rate of 14.7%. Much of this is because California’s economy is heavily reliant on tourism and over 40% of the state’s hospitality workers have filed for unemployment as of mid-April (the cut-off date of the May jobs report). (KPBS News – 5/22/20)